is He, who by a secret influence moulds the very structure of the renewed heart into an entire affinity with His own heavenly light, and makes it transparent to the messages of His love. It is He who, by His wise Providence, fulfils the part of the lapidary, and removes the crust of earthliness and selfish desires from the souls whom He loves. And then it is He also, who shines upon them with the bright sunlight of heaven, to bring out all their various graces, and renders them beautiful with his own reflected beauty. How various in their form, colour and lustre, are these precious stones, all set in the breast-plate of the Great High Priest! Here we see the stern dignity of an Elijah, very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, and there, the tenderness and contrition of a Magdalene, weeping beside the open grave of her risen Lord. Here we see a Zechariah, uttering the language of a righteous indignation in the hour of death-the Lord look upon it, and require it; and then a Stephen, praying for his murderer

“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." But all these varied forms of holiness, however bright or beautiful, derive their beauty and brightness from a higher source, and receive it from the fulness of Emmanuel. The Sun of Righteousness must shine upon them, or all their borrowed glory will disappear.

But science can detect, in every crystal, many hidden properties that escape the eye of the casual observer. Their outward appearance depends only on the reflected light which glances from their surface; but there are delicacies of structure, and secret qualities, which can only be detected when light is transmitted through them. The results are as beautiful as various, which thus reveal themselves to the keener eye of science. The pure sunbeam will thus resolve itself into innumer

able forms of light, that rival the rainbow in their rich colouring, while they almost baffle description by their elegant complexity of form. No part of science is more fascinating to the eye than this branch of optics, due to modern discoveries in polarity and crystallization. And here too we have an emblem, full of significance to the spiritual mind. Besides those distinctions of character in the believer, which meet every eye, there are others deeper in the heart's experience, and which only the Searcher of hearts can fully discern. Each ransomed spirit has its own peculiar appetency for special parts of Divine truth. Some lessons of God's word have been more deeply impressed on it than others, some examples have a stronger hold on its hidden sympathies, some precepts a double power over the conscience, some promises are felt doubly precious to the heart, and are endeared to it by the memory of peculiar consolation they may have rendered in the hour of deep sorrow. The foundation of the heavenly city is "garnished with all manner of precious stones." None of these jewels of the Lord will have had the same experience, or be moulded into precisely the same form of spiritual feeling and heavenly wisdom. One will resemble the glowing ruby, and another the green emerald, and every variety in the natural world meets an answering variety in the divine forms of delicate sympathy, pure emotion, and refined experience of Divine truth, among the children of God. He only, who knows what is in man, and bears the names of His people like precious stones on His breast-plate, to intimate His full knowledge of their various characters, and the various forms of Divine beauty in which He is preparing them to shine for ever,-He only can form and polish these gems of the sanctuary, and prepare every saint for His own pe

culiar work and destined office of heavenly grace and wisdom in the kingdom of God.

In that final state of glory, how beautifully does the same emblem still describe to us the blessedness of the redeemed, and the surpassing excellence and love of the Redeemer. The glory of God shall enlighten the heavenly city, and the Lamb is the light thereof. "With Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light we shall see light." The rainbow around the throne is a type of the full harmony of all Divine perfection, manifested in the whole course of His Providence, from the beginning of time. The light which fills the heavenly city is a figure of that pure and unspotted holiness, that infinite love and boundless wisdom which will beam for ever in its unclouded brightness on all the redeemed ones of the Lord. The foundation of precious stones, the gates of pearl, and the walls of jasper, all serve to complete the glorious emblem of light, in all its fulness, love, in all its depths and reality, holiness, manifested in every various form of celestial beauty and grace. One Fountain of light shall thus feed all the streams of created being with fresh and undying radiance, and be reflected by all the children of light, the jewels of the Lord, the precious stones of His diadem, in ever-varying forms of holy fellowship, of meditation, thanksgiving and praise. May we be prepared, by His grace, for that blessed home. May He who is the true Light, cast upon us ever the bright beams of His love, that walking here in the light of His truth, we may at length attain to the light of everlasting life, and have our largest hopes far exceeded by the brightness of that promised glory."For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then shall we know even as we are known."

T. R. B.

THE SPIRIT OF NATURE.-No. III.

"In the starry shade

Of dim and solitary loveliness,

We learn the language of another world."

CHANGELESS, spiritual, shining in pure, unshadowed radiance, revolving in ceaseless, harmonious concord, from the far depths of the etherial vault, the starry worlds speak of eternity. The patriarchs of the antediluvian earth gazed with silent awe upon their silver brilliance; generation after generation drifted by upon the waves of time; the world was overswept by deluge, and convulsed by earthquakes; still, in their spiritual and lustrous beauty, the glorious stars looked down upon the sons of men.

It was a sublime idea of Pythagoras, that the planets emitted sounds proportionate to their respective distances from the sun, and thus formed a celestial concert, too etherial in its melodious chorus to become audible to children of the dust. In a metaphorical sense, this music of the spheres still descends to those who have become the adopted sons of the Creator; the stars utter a melodious hymn: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy-work."

Some of the Indian tribes believe the galaxy or milky-way to be the spirit's path to paradise. The idea is beautiful and imaginative, but the sublimity of the galaxy rises, and almost overpowers imagination, when we consider that its brightness is caused by countless starry systems revolving around their respective suns;

and our planetary system with its central sun, forms only one among the innumerable groups of stars, which blend their faint and crowded rays to form that path of light. Two thousand nebulæ or clusters of stars were discovered by Sir William Herschel alone, and notwithstanding the apparent contiguity of the orbs, yet'their mutual distances cannot be less than a hundred thousand times the radius of the terrestrial orbit.' Thus contemplated, the galaxy becomes indeed a path-way of light, conducting to the Creator; its countless worlds on worlds revolving in harmonious regularity before one Almighty Being, who, in the grandeur of Infinity, controls, directs, upholds all. Yet more, this immortal king, this Omnipresent Spirit, permits the children of clay to call Him Father, invites them to lean on His omnipotence, and repose upon His love. Nay, more, that High and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, condescendeth to dwell in the lowly and contrite heart of a unit among the myriad mortals, who dwell on one of the smallest of the innumerable worlds which he has made.-Nay more, not merely to dwell therein, but to infuse a portion of His divine Spirit; to manifest his Presence with joy; to establish more intimate communion with the immortal spirit, than it could possibly experience with its fellow-beings.

By one of the sacred minstrels of the present day, the departure of friends to a better world, has been compared to the gradual disappearance of the stars from the firmament :

"Thus star by star declines,

Till all are passed away;

As morning high and higher shines,

Unto the perfect day;

Nor sink those stars in endless night,

But hide themselves in heaven's own light."